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Old 04-08-2011, 04:30 AM   #84 (permalink)
Arragonis
The PRC.
 
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Quote:
Originally Posted by jamesqf View Post
I dunno - why can't the Europeans use dollars?

Indeed, they've got even less excuse for their monetary obtuseness: the gallon was around for a long time before the silly Europeans (actually the Revolutionary French, and you know what wonderful people THEY were) came up with liters, but the Americans simply adopted the existing Spanish dollar (from the Austrian thaler, and from which we get "pieces of eight", quarters being two bits, etc.) from Europe...
The Metric system is logical though, unlike the 'based on the length of the upper arm and an average stride of a man' nonsense of the older system. As for currency, maybe moving away from this was a bad idea.
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